Everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion. This is the movie moment we’ve been waiting for. The moment where we reach each other at the very last second. He’s just a couple of metres away now. Almost within my grasp. He reaches out his hand, and I reach mine out too. Our fingers finally touch.

‘I can’t do it again, Zach.’

‘You don’t have to,’ I say softly, looking down at his lips, his fingers wrapping round mine. We make eye contact. The clock’s ticking down to midnight. This is finally it. We both know what’s coming, and all eyes are on us now.

I take all of him in, those beautiful eyes, that perfect smile.

I don’t know how I didn’t see it sooner.

I close my eyes and lean in. He leans in too, and, as the fireworks explode above us, there’s this static charge between us, pulling us closer.

For just a moment, it feels like everything is exactly how it should be. Like the spell’s about to be broken. Like the two of us are finally free.

And just as our lips touch …

7

‘Prom night, baby!’

No, it can’t be …

I think of Kellen, one floor above, waking up next to Rhys. My stomach sinks as his words replay in my mind: I can’t do it again, Zach.

‘Are you OK?’ Chase says, noticing my mood and sitting down on the bed next to me. ‘I thought you could do with a wake-up call. You missed breakfast.’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

I can’t stop thinking about Kellen. I’d convinced myself in those last moments that this was our love story, but maybe I was wrong. What else are we still missing?

And that’s when there’s a knock at the door.

‘I’ll get it,’ Chase says, going over and pulling it open. ‘Kellen?’ he says, seeing him standing there wearing nothing but a pair of oversized basketball shorts. They’re so big on him that he’s having to hold them up with one hand.

‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Is Zach there?’

‘Yeah,’ Chase replies, stepping aside and letting Kellen into the room.

‘I grabbed the first thing I could find,’ he says, pulling on the waistband of his shorts.

I smile at that. ‘But you’re OK?’

‘I am now,’ he says. ‘You were right, Zach. You were always right. Rhys is an asshole. And I made sure to tell him that.’

‘Wait,’ Chase interrupts. ‘So you and him …?’

‘We broke up.’

‘Oh,’ Chase says. ‘Shit. I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Kellen says. ‘We were over a while ago, really. We’ve just been going round and round in circles.’ He shoots me a wink as he says it.

‘Well, for what it’s worth,’ Chase says, ‘I always thought you could do better.’